Hot girls kicking butt is not all it takes for an awesome movie, but it's a good start. Bitch Slap offers three scantily clad babes - Hel (Erin Cummings), Camaro (America Olivo) and Trixie (Julia Voth) - in the sweltering desert, battling gangsters and each other for a stash of diamonds.

Catfights, wet shirts and girl on girl makeout scenes are all inspired by the exploitation movies of the '50s, '60s and '70s. Think Russ Meyer. Screenwriters Eric Greundemann and Rick Jacobson, with Jacobsen directing, crafted an unapologetic display of sleaze.

Gruendemann and Jacobson combine the location shoot in the desert with green screen scenes as flashback cutaways. That way, they fit motorcycles, avalanches and underground clubs into their low budget epic. The duo come from the TV world, with Hercules, Xena and Cleopatra 2525. They are also working with producers Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert on the upcoming Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

To give a sense of the fun these guys are having, they began the interview entertaining complaints about the recent studio film Invictus, joking about how important it thought it was. It definitely didn't have enough cleavage or boob punches. Also, the guys didn't care if their voices got mixed up in a double interview, but to be accurate, we still wrote down who said what.

Rick Jacobson: That is funny you say that because whenever we first started getting on the radar with people and they'd go, "What is it?" We used to always say, "This is what Grindhouse should have been." That's not really meant as a dig, obviously, to those guys because obviously they've got ridiculous skills. But like when we first heard about Grindhouse, our first thing was, "Oh shit." But then once we saw it, one, it's just a completely different film in the sense they went to really recreate the grindhouse thing. For us, we were just taking more exploitation themes and situations and doing a modern spin. But we both saw it and kind of left going, "Ah, that kind of really missed the mark."

EG: We went very excited about it, like, "Wow, great, someone else is doing this." We of course love both of those guys, but we came away from it going, "Wow, for us it missed the mark,"

RJ: What happened? Yeah, it missed the mark. That last 10 minutes of Rodriguez's episode when she gets the gun on her leg, that's when I was like, "Fuck, this is what I came for." Unfortunately, that was only 10 minutes of the first episode.

EG: And the trailers in it, the trailers the other directors did, absolutely wonderful. There's wonderful things about it.

SG: But is it the difference between they're doing an homage to exploitation and you're actually doing the genre?

EG: Yes.

RJ: We'd like to think, we kind of hope that was the case and at the same time, kind of do a 21st century version of the classic exploitation flicks. Like I said, taking the themes and situations found in those things yet updating it for the postmodern audience.

EG: And a very different world we live in right now and that's why we thought, "Isn't it funny to actually try to take the sensibilities of an exploitation film from the '50s and '70s and ram them down the throat of 2009, morality and everything else, and see where it goes. A lot of what we found fun and fascinating about the story as it came about was doing just that.

SG: What would have been crossing the line and not right for the genre?

EG: I think one of the main things for us was that we weren't setting out to make a parody. We were making a loving homage to it and we certainly have tongue firmly planted in cheek, but we never wanted to be Epic Movie or Naked Gun. For the comedic aspects of the film, having tongue firmly planted in cheek, making sure it was all played completely straight but making sure the outrageousness of the dialogue and the situations was what brought the humor. We joke about the Alps scene with the guy in Lederhosen. At one point we were talking about maybe he's running around the Alps with an accordion that shoots. That clearly crossed the line. Even the scene that exists now probably crosses the line anyway.

RJ: Walking the tightrope very, very thin.

EG: In terms of taboos and other things, there's not very much at all that we would go, "Oh, I don't want to go there."

SG: What were the different types of female beauty you wanted to capture?

RJ: I've just always been very attracted to the strong female lead. The ones that don't need that helping hand. The ones that just drive the story. The other thing too is I love tough women. There's just something cool.

EG: We're both married to tough women.

RJ: We're married to tough women and there's just something so much more interesting to me and to Erik with women that are capable of handling themselves. Not only that but just dealing just a world of punishment, and yet being feminine, beautiful and sexy all at the same time. That's kind of really what the foundation of this thing was. It was obviously built on three beautiful women in an outrageous situation that continually spirals out of control. I think the poster speaks for itself. Who doesn't want to see that movie.

SG: I like them too. Where can I actually meet tough women?

EG: Good question.

RJ: New Zealand's a good place. That's a good place to smart.

SG: But you each found one.

EG: Well, he found his in New Zealand, his wife Rachel. My wife is a tough New Yorker. I met her here in Los Angeles on a blind date. We've been married 20 years now. Yeah, definitely tough New York broad who doesn't take any shit from anybody.

RJ: And they have their own voices, their own opinions.

EG: And tell us, often.

RJ: Well, both of them were just great sounding boards when developing and writing this script. They certainly knew what we were trying to go for and they rolled their eyes a lot at stuff, but at the same time, we always did kind of seek their approval for where we were going with these characters and they were always kind of like, "Yeah, wow, that's great."

EG: For my wife, for instance, this kind of movie is not her taste in films but she's the first one to say, "Hey, even if I somehow happened upon this film watching it at night or whatever, and I didn't know that you or Rick were involved in it, I'd actually think it was still pretty cool because it is strong, independent women kicking ass, saving the day and not taking shit from anybody, including men, and not relying on men and not victimized and not what you see in 90-95% of the situation.

SG: Where I was going with the different kinds of beauty question is that you have a blonde, a brunette and a redhead. There's an Asian girl who pops up.

RJ: Well, funny enough we don't have a blonde. Trixie was originally supposed to be a blonde. She was written as a blonde.

SG: I thought you had America go blonde.

RJ: Well, she lightened up. I certainly wouldn't look at the film and consider her a blonde.

EG: But yeah, we definitely strived to not have three dark haired very fair complexioned girls. There's no question we wanted to provide something for everyone, if you will. We actually knew that we did a pretty good job at it because 2/3 of the way through shooting, I took a poll of every crew member. Whether it was their physicality or whether it was their characters and what appealed to them, both men and women, I went around the entire crew and said, "Okay, who's your favorite?" Right down the light, 33%. Some said Trixie, some said Hel, some said Camaro. And then there was like 10% that went, "Yeah, that's all great but I really like Kinky." So we knew that we probably got the balance fairly well.

SG: There's a balance there, but did you ever think of taking it further into alternative types, like Suicide Girls types?

EG: Yes, we did.

RJ: Well, sure.

EG: We did absolutely, and in fact we're exploring that much more. We're just starting to kick the tires on the sequel and we're starting to explore lots of those kind of characters in the sequel.

RJ: Actually, even to the point where again to that kind of desire to give tastes for everybody, Hel for the longest time we wanted to be an African-American. We sought out a few and the only reason it really never happened was because we just never found that right actor for it. Erin just did such a great job that wowed us right from the get go that she started as a white girl and then went black and it kind of came back. So yeah, we definitely were trying to cover our bases and give a little bit of something for everybody.

SG: Considering the genre, was there ever going to be nudity?

RJ: No. No, we talked about it all for maybe about two minutes.

EG: If you're talking about conventional nudity, like topless, bottomless kind of nudity, we've always thought that it actually is sexier to keep a bit of mystery, the peekaboo-ish stuff. You know, "Oh look, my T-shirt got wet." We always thought that's more in the tone of what we were trying to do and also sexier for us than "Look at me, I'm topless." There's only two topless shots in there and they're not even our three. They're random girls.

RJ: Another big drive for that, outside of we just simply think it's sexier, when you add nudity, and especially when you add nudity in the level of what we're doing, the talent pool falls off a cliff. We already had a massive challenge on our hands of finding beautiful women who could act and who can do all this stuff that needed to be done. When all of a sudden you say, "Oh, and by the way, you've got to pop your top or do full nudity," you're going to just get killed in your casting process. We would not have the film today if we didn't have these three girls.

SG: I was thinking that too. If I wanted to see them naked, they wouldn't be able to do any of this other cool stuff.

RJ: They wouldn't be able to do this and then all of a sudden, the film loses so much. So much of the success of this film is based on those three girls and the performances they gave. If you all of a sudden pull that out and you get some girl who has no problem taking her top off but she's a horrible actress, delivering the lines we had written, it's a train wreck.

SG: It's interesting to me that a low budget exploitation movie now has green screen.

RJ: Well, that's the introduction into the 21st century. That was just a creative decision early on. It was actually originally budget driven. When we first started doing it, we were attacking it practically. We were going to go shoot in an alley, we were going to shoot in a beach, we were going shoot in a prison. But once the realities of the schedule and the time it was going to take to do these things, it just kind of became like oh, man. Then we started thinking, "Let's go green screen," not only for a budgetary reason and schedule reason, but also for a stylistic reason.

SG: I understand that. It just made me think 20 years ago green screen was what huge budget movies did because they could afford to. Now it's what you do to save money.

RJ: Well, you do it to save money but on top of that, because it's certainly not cheap to do it, especially with the amount that we did it. But, it allowed the film to kind of go further than if we had just shot it all practically. It gave it a stylish look and it gave it just a little something to the B story which I think kind of helps propel that B story, give it its own unique kind of feel.

SG: You talk about thinking about a sequel. Could you see keeping this style going with other titles?

RJ: Oh sure. In fact, that's being discussed.

EG: Yes, it's funny you should mention that because we've been approached by a consortium of people who wants to actually fund a bunch of movies in this vein, approached with the same sort of level of tongue in cheek, exploitation fun if you will. Rick and I say this all the time. This is one of those movies that literally could have only been made at this budget range and everything else in the last couple of years. We were one of the first people to adopt the RED camera. Literally, we were probably the second or third movie to be shooting on RED camera. While it provided us a lot of problems, the fact that we were able to shoot this movie digitally in such a way that made it look like a filmic process and everything else.

SG: Is there a hole to be filled with movies that are just fun and not trying to have some important message?

RJ: Absolutely and that's what this movie was made for. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. We're not trying to get some big message [across]. We've always thought of this film as just a pure popcorn movie. It's just come on, just watch this wild and wacky adventure and hopefully have a really good time, hopefully not see the twists and turns coming and just have fun. That's what we think is good, fun entertainment.

SG: What's in the extended version: more action? More hotness?

EG: Yeah, the extended version is about half and hour longer. It's quite a bit. We've always called this movie internally the little epic. The DVD will have some of the deleted scenes. There were six green screen scenes, complete scenes that are much more character and spinning the story even further out, that just had to go for time reasons. Then our EEE version, or our epic extended edition is another 28 minutes or something like that. It's more character and story stuff than anything else. Yes, the fight is a little longer. Yes, the sex scene is a little longer. In fact, there is one big additional fight in a prison shower.

RJ: But there's really not a scene in the film that didn't get some form of a hack at it, because we were just, I mean, a half hour. That's a massive amount.

SG: What kind of shower scene and shower fight did you do without nudity?

RJ: Very creatively. Hel fights completely nude.

EG: Hel and Camaro. It is where they first meet. Camaro is sort of the grand damme of the prison. She's the queen bea. Hel is the newcomer so she and her girls are going to go in there and rough her up. Very quickly, Hel's towel is ripped away from her so Hel has to fight completely nude while they're bashing each other in this digitally created shower that actually was the prison shower that Nelson Mandela had to use for 20 years, because our South African visual effects company actually did that scene for us. We of course have added a bit more graffiti that I'm guessing is not in Invictus.

RJ: There are surprisingly quite a few of the deleted scenes in the trailer that's out there floating around. So people will kind of be, "What happened to that scene out in the alley?" That'll just whet the appetite for hopefully our extended version.

SG: At what point did you get involved with Sam Raimi on Spartacus: Blood and Sand?

RJ:Spartacus came about last year at this time and that was just I had worked with Sam and Rob before on Xena and Hercules which is where I met Erik. They were just starting up this new series. Thankfully, they thought of me when it came time to do the pilot. We were right smack dab in the middle of sound editing and doing the sound mix and still dealing with all the visual effects and stuff. It was just a situation that it was too good of an opportunity for me to pass up. Thank God for technology and video chatting and being able to send files back and forth. Erik and I had many an iChat.

EG: At strange hours of the night.

SG: If you did the pilot, you really establish the style they'll use for the whole series.

RJ: Yeah, which is again one of the reasons why it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. As a director, feature films is always the best because you create and set the style. In television, the best thing you can get is a pilot. I've done a lot of shows where you come in and the show's established and the actors know what they're doing and the look is established and you're just a traffic cop. That was always the thing that was kind of unique about Xena and Herc and Cleopatra 2525, which Erik and I did together. And I did the pilot for that. It's a great opportunity. If you're going to work in television and be a director, a pilot's the best thing to get. So I was very grateful to those guys for thinking of me to do that because it's a cool show.

SG: What sort of bloody action and hot sexuality can we expect in that?

EG: A lot of each.

RJ: The beauty of it is because it's for Starz and it's obviously cable, we didn't have the network restrictions. So the violence is hardcore, the sex is full on. There's full nudity, both male and female so it's very true to the day. It has its own unique kind of look and style about it which was kind of the big challenge because obviously with 300 being so popular and us embracing the graphic novel side as well, it was trying to come up with some visual style and pallet that hopefully when people look at it, they don't just see 300: The Series, they say, "Oh, that's a nice little hat tip to 300, yet this has got its own unique signature."

SG: This may be on Starz' end, but it does look like 300: The Series because they're probably trying to make that the image.

RJ: Sure, with the trailer, and that's definitely with the trailer because they're splashing all the real cool sexy and hardcore images on it but I think when you actually see the story itself play out, you kind of find that it's much more story driven and character driven. I actually found myself referencing Gladiator more than 300.

SG: So does he rise up at the end of the pilot and that's where the series goes?

RJ: It's a 13 episode series. The first episode is kind of almost like Spartacus' origins, how he ends up in Capua and ends up a slave to the Lentulus Batiatus and how he goes to the gladiatorial camp. It certainly follows the Spartacus legend but obviously takes film liberties and stuff. The last episode in the 13 is Spartacus leading the revolt out of the prison.

SG: I figured they want more seasons.

RJ: That's the plan but we'll see how this season gets accepted.

Bitch Slap opens in theaters and VOD January 8. Spartacus premieres January 22 on Starz.